This painting was the left half of a decorative panel commissioned by Jean Schopfer, a writer who published under the pen name Claude Anet. In 1935, over 30 years after its completion, Vuillard cut the panel into two and reworked it; the other half, La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Lunch, is also in the National Gallery’s collection.

   In 1901, both Schopfer and Vuillard stayed in a villa at Vasouy, along the coast from Honfleur in Normandy, which had been rented by their friends Lucy and Jos Hessel. Here, the visitors enjoy the villa’s lush garden: adults pause to talk on a meandering path while the two young Schopfer children play in the foreground, accompanied by their nurse. Just behind this trio stands Lucy Hessel, who was inserted into the painting when it was reworked.

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   La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Garden and La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Lunch once formed a single decorative panel, commissioned by the dramatist Jean Schopfer in 1901 and installed in his Paris apartment on the Avenue Victor Hugo later that year. They show Jean and his wife at the time, Alice, relaxing with friends in a Normandy summer home.

   When Jean and Alice divorced in 1903, he ended up taking Vuillard’s painting, and in 1910 it was installed in the Paris apartment he shared with his new wife, Clarisse Langlois Schopfer. A few years after Jean’s death in 1931, Clarisse asked Vuillard to divide the panel into two and rework some of the figures and the foliage, which he did throughout 1935.

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